1815-1835
The Cowan Family
Following the Neville period of Woodville's ownership, from 1774 to 1814, John and Winifred Neville's niece, Eliza M. Kirkpatrick, and her husband, Christopher Cowan, became Woodville's next owners and occupants.
Christopher Cowan was born in 1780 in Enniskillen in the Town land of Shallany, County of Fermanagh, Ireland. The facts of his early life are not well known, nor are the reasons for his emigration to the United States. The social upheavals surrounding the Irish Rebellion in 1798 may have played a role, and Cowan may have left for the United States just prior to 1800 at the age of twenty.
Cowan’s family business in Ireland was flax farming and possibly linen production, which seems to have produced a significant amount of wealth for him prior to his immigration to the United States. Evidence for this can be seen in the tall case clock that he brought with him, an expensive item that now stands in the dining room at Woodville.
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Christopher Cowan, 1780-1835. An immigrant from the north of Ireland, Cowan opened Pittsburgh's first rolling and slitting mill in 1812 but sold the business in 1814. He purchased Woodville in late 1814 and operated it through tenant farmers and hired laborers. Cowan continued to live on the farm with his family until his death in 1835. The original undated drawing remained in the Cowan and Wrenshall families and was donated to the Neville House Associates, Inc. in 2012 by Sarah Wrenshall Steinmark and her husband, Edgar Steinmark.
1812
Cowan’s Economic Prosperity
Christopher Cowan is remembered as Pittsburgh’s first Industrialist and for his role in creating the early Pittsburgh iron industry. Shortly after his arrival in Pittsburgh, he opened one of Pittsburgh’s first cut nail making machines. In 1812, he opened the city's first rolling and slitting mill, which produced sheet iron that was used to make fire tongs, spikes, spades, scythes, sickles, hoes, axes, frying pans, plows and a variety of other consumer goods, including the iron fireplace insert that can be seen in the Woodville dining room. The iron business brought Cowan economic prosperity but also gained him entrance to local society. On September 29, 1810, he married Eliza Kirkpatrick at the Woodville mansion. Eliza was the daughter of Abraham Kirkpatrick and Mary Ann Oldham Kirkpatrick. Abraham and Mary Ann also had been married at Woodville in 1786, the first wedding reported in the Pittsburgh Gazette. Abraham was a veteran officer of the American Revolution. He was one of John Neville's closest friends and political allies and had been at Neville's Bower Hill plantation when it was attacked during the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794. John Neville and Abraham Kirkpatrick also were related by marriage as each man had married an Oldham sister.
1814
“Old” Families
Christopher Cowan's marriage to a niece of John and Winifred Neville and to a daughter of Abraham Kirkpatrick therefore made him part of several of Pittsburgh's most renowned "old" families and marked his new social prominence and arrival as much as his business acumen secured his economic success. Christopher Cowan decided to sell his Pittsburgh rolling and slitting mill in 1814, and entered into the life of a gentleman farmer. Increasingly uncertain national economic conditions resulting from the War of 1812 as well as greater local competition probably played a role in his retirement at the age of 35, but family matters also seem to have influenced this decision. At about this time, the bank had taken over the Woodville estate when Presley and Nancy Neville decided to leave Pittsburgh to take up residence in Neville, Ohio, the Ohio River town near Cincinnati that Presley had laid out.
1815
Purchase of Woodville
Eliza Cowan would have been aware that Woodville was available for purchase, the estate had belonged to her maternal aunt and uncle and was where she and Christopher had married in 1810. With money realized from the sale of his Pittsburgh businesses, Christopher Crowan purchased Woodville from the bank on November 2, 1814. The Cowans then left Pittsburgh for a new rural life at Woodville, probably beginning in early 1815. Perhaps the city's rapidly increasing population and its equally growing and unhealthful industrial smoke and grime also played a part in the decision to seek a more rural life. The first two of the couple's four daughters and three sons were born in Pittsburgh, but the third, John Conway Cowan, and all their later children were born at Woodville. John Conway Cowan's birth in 1815 therefore marks the first year of the Cowan family's residency at Woodville.
1835
Lord Cowan
Christopher Cowan took over the running of the Woodville farm and seems to have lived out the rest of his life until his death at the age of 55 as something of a "country squire." His less fortunate neighbors are said to have called him "Lord Cowan." He may have operated part of the farm using hired or indentured labor, while other tracts farther from the Woodville mansion house were tenanted out to smaller farmers in exchange for a portion of the crops and livestock they raised. Wheat, rye, com, and oats were the standard crops, while cattle, oxen, hogs, and horses also were raised. A water-powered grain and shingling mill also stood on the property, near the present intersection of Washington Pike and Thoms Run Road just north of Woodville. Cowan also kept a still house at Woodville, which is thought to have been located in the original building on the Woodville property that currently serves as a visitor center. Eliza Cowan died in 1822 at the young age of 34, and Christopher died at Woodville in 1835. The location of Eliza's burial is not known, but her husband and one of their sons, John Conway Cowan (d. 1838), are buried in the graveyard of Trinity Church on Sixth Avenue, Pittsburgh. A large obelisk prominently marks the location.
1821
Amelia Louise Cowan Swartzwelder
Undated portrait of Amelia Louise Cowan Swartzwelder, 1821-1904, youngest of the four daughters of Christopher Cowan and Elizabeth Marie Kirkpatrick Cowan,1789-1822, known as Eliza. The Cowans also had three sons. Portrait owned by Mrs. Robert Dickey, III.
1785
Case Clock
Made by Thomas Birch in Manchester, England ca 1785. His case clock may have been brought to America when Christopher Cowan emigrated from Ireland about 1800. This clock that now stands in the dining room at Woodville.